


Smoke Rings From This Paper Doll

by grandfatherclock



Series: Half-Seconds at a Time [11]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23321851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: “Hey, Cayleb,” he hears, and blinks—because Jester is looking at him, through his fingers. From the awkward angle, her hair is tumbling down her shoulders, him sitting in a nook in this library and her leaning her back down to look at him closely. His books are cluttered about, but he can’t quite bring himself to care, not when his flush is spreading along his face, not when his breath is picking up and his entire chest feels like it’s… stuttering, somehow.It’s what she does to him. She makes him stutter.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Series: Half-Seconds at a Time [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1526909
Comments: 3
Kudos: 55





	Smoke Rings From This Paper Doll

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt widojest + Hozier lyric _Smoke rings from this paper doll_.

Caleb looks at his blackened fingers.

They’re all darkened at the tips, the skin of them rough, and as he rubs his pointer finger and thumb against each other, the dryness of his touch grating against itself, he wonders if he could rub them deep enough to flake, enough to make his fingers start to break away. It’s how his skin got this way from the start—he learned fire magic young, too young to be careful, and the skin around his fingers would often singe after the flame erupted out.

As Bren, he was always too giddy with the light flitting out, turning to see the approval shining in Astrid or Eodwulf or his parents’ faces to ever quite pay attention to the flash of pain.

It was supposed to be momentary, after all.

As Caleb, he knows slightly better.

“Hey, Cayleb,” he hears, and blinks—because Jester is looking at him, through his fingers. From the awkward angle, her hair is tumbling down her shoulders, him sitting in a nook in this library and her leaning her back down to look at him closely. His books are cluttered about, but he can’t quite bring himself to care, not when his flush is spreading along his face, not when his breath is picking up and his entire chest feels like it’s… stuttering, somehow.

It’s what she does to him. She makes him stutter.

“Jes-ter,” he says, and his fingers pull away from each other, lowering so his view of her is uninterrupted. After all, why would he want to look at those wretched things when she’s _there_ , and she’s _smiling_ , and her violet eyes glimmer like the most precious amethysts, more vibrant than the jewels that adorn the Bright Queen’s neck? Her freckles are spread beautifully over her cheeks, like the spread of her lips pulling further on her mouth and exposing fanged teeth, and _gottverdammt_ him, and _gottverdammt_ this, his thoughts pull into a useful _fucking_ stutter.

Bren used to stutter, until his parents coaxed it out of him. His life in Blumenthal was squalid but… but complete in its own way, and it built in him this confidence. This way to breathe that was natural, that was charming, that got him out of his various pranks and tricks when he would spend his afternoons trying to pull them against the villagers whose names he knew before he knew how to read words on a page.

“I got you a snack,” Jester informs him very seriously, holding out a chocolate. The smile of her lips is too uncontrollable that she can’t not have been hiding something, and Caleb finds his own lips drawing into a small smirk as he considers her hand. It’s freckled like the rest of her, and he’s already reaching for her touch, reaching without thinking about it, reaching without _thinking_ about the fact that he’s reaching, that he’s here and he’s breathing and existing and conversing with one Jester Lavorre.

It’s been a while since something has existed in the world but not the smug solitude of his own head. Usually it’s the other way around. Usually he just aches and imagines and dreams of sugary kisses and held hands—his hands are perfect, in this scenario, they’re soft like Bren’s hands, they aren’t broken like Caleb’s—and the only evidence that spills out into this world, into Exandria with all its broken pieces, is a lingering look.

A pathetic need working itself out on his face.

Blackened fingers reach for the chocolate, and as he expected something quite strange happened. A _jolt_ of electricity trips against him, and he pulls his hand away—holding the chocolate, mind him—as Jester’s voice breaks into a string of laughter. “I rubbed the rug really hard with my feet, Cayleb,” she sings as she cackles, “and that’s why you jumped so quickly! Like, you know…” Her voice trails as she thinks.

“A cat,” he finishes, and he’s popping the chocolate into his mouth.

Strange. Another unthinking action.

He realizes for a moment he didn’t deliberate about the feeling of rough fingers against the smoothness of the sweet, and doesn’t quite know what to make of it. His eyes flit to Jester, through the stretch of her smile, he swears for a moment, with the crease of her eyebrows as she gazes down at him—that there might be this… this useless need working out in the way her lips part, like she’s struggling for what to say—and then the moment passes, and Caleb chastises himself for letting himself let go for this moment. It’s making the fondness that exists under his skin, under his fingers, act up, and that won’t do.

Frumpkin paws at Jester’s face, sensing the pang in Caleb’s throat, and Caleb looks away.

That won’t do.


End file.
